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I think its going back

Are you offended that my experience hasn't been perfect? I came here for information(solutions), not to be scolded that I'm not being open minded. Complaining that core functionality of the phone not working FOR ME, is not comparing it to an iPhone. These are things that SHOULD work.

You do realize that you came here comparing the GS3 directly to the iPhone and that you have owned many iPhones before it and even directly mentioned how things work with this phone versus your iPhone yet you don't understand when someone calls you out on it?

The reason why I do not like BMW's is because of how dissimilar they are to Audi's. Do you know how well received it is when I post that on Bimmerforums?
 
Every device functions differently. My wife and I both have SGS3's and sometimes mine works and hers doesn't and vice versa. I might get a good wifi signal or 3G signal and even though she is next to me, hers isn't as strong. Phones are quirky like that. I was in the same boat as you were. I had an iPhone 3GS for a couple of years and just got bored with it. Switched to an Android device (Epic 4G) and couldn't believe what I was missing. I have had Android Devices ever since (Evo4G,Evo3D & SGS3). I picked up my daughter's iPhone 4S the other day to see what I've been missing and to see if I would get all nostalgic and all, but it only made me realize how happy I was with Android (and the amount of customization available to me without having to Jailbreak). Even though all of my previous phones had their own little quirks, I'd never go back to the monotony that is iOS.

If all else fails, you can always root and flash custom ROM's. Most of the Dev's have already fixed a lot of the minor issues and bugs that you are experiencing. You may find a ROM that does exactly what you are looking for. Just food for thought.
 
Thanks for all the responses. I'm certainly not trying to bash Android or the S3. I was actually just frustrated, b/c I REALLY don't want to go back to an iPhone. I'm going to see what at&t says about the a/v issues i'm having tonight. Hopefully, they give me a new phone and I'll start fresh.

As far as car integration, BMW and Samsung have partnered up, but the integration app won't be out until next summer. Maybe i'll use my phone as an iPod until then.
 
Apps can have a tremendous effect on Battery Life. I have an app called "YouVersion Bible" that will drain come on (whenever) and it will all of the sudden take the device temperature up and the Battery Down. I can lose 50% in 1 hour doing whatever it is doing. When I have the app itself up I do not see this issue. It must be getting stuck in an update loop or something. This happened on Saturday. I was leaving the house and had 50% battery and charged while on the drive. At my destination I was indoors unplugged for about 1 hour and my phone was very warm. The battery had drained to 5% and I looked at the running/recent apps and found that this app was the only app on the recent apps.

Hope this helps! Rogue apps can have serious battery consequences.
 
battery life issues... I have none. my phone has yet to ever die on me, the lowest percentage i got the battery to was 45% left

As for wi fi when i tap the connect wifi it INSTANTLY finds networks and connects me, no hesitation no lag, nada

i think you either have a bad phone, or you were just expecting WAY to much from the GS3

myself i think this is a phenominal phone, if your another diehard iphoner Hey more power to ya.... good luck on that
 
Apps can have a tremendous effect on Battery Life. I have an app called "YouVersion Bible" that will drain come on (whenever) and it will all of the sudden take the device temperature up and the Battery Down. I can lose 50% in 1 hour doing whatever it is doing. When I have the app itself up I do not see this issue. It must be getting stuck in an update loop or something. This happened on Saturday. I was leaving the house and had 50% battery and charged while on the drive. At my destination I was indoors unplugged for about 1 hour and my phone was very warm. The battery had drained to 5% and I looked at the running/recent apps and found that this app was the only app on the recent apps.

Hope this helps! Rogue apps can have serious battery consequences.

Amen and this is why android takes a little more fussing with because there are thousands of apps out there just waiting to cause trouble if you download them. With Android, you have to be more vigilant. I tend to read the user reviews on the app before I download it. I think there is even an app out there that will tell you which apps use how much battery so you can remove one if it's being a hog. I'm fairly selective and I won't keep around an app that gives me any kind of trouble. Also, any app that routinely goes out and gets info (weather, news, sports, etc.) needs to be watched and configured so it doesn't check any more than necessary. The more they check, the faster the battery will go down. Widgets are especially good for this. Watch your update intervals. Obviously there is more involved in keeping an Android phone fine tuned but once you get a good configuration, you shouldn't have to mess with it to much. :)
 
seems the op is having an attitude when clearly people are posting their opinions and own observations by using the same phone

mate im not quite sure what you are wanting. if you want to go back to iphone then fine, dont ask questions and go.
if however you have posted because you want to understand what is going on then maybe rather than saying "good for you, i dont" maybe you should look at that and go "hmm majority of posters do not have this problem. maybe i have a faulty device or faulty battery. maybe just maybe i can take it back to the store and swap the device or battery"

EDIT: i see youve posted saying you were frustrated. i apologise for the rant
 
Thanks for all the responses. I'm certainly not trying to bash Android or the S3. I was actually just frustrated, b/c I REALLY don't want to go back to an iPhone. I'm going to see what at&t says about the a/v issues i'm having tonight. Hopefully, they give me a new phone and I'll start fresh.

ok, so perhaps due to frustration your post didn't come out the way you inteneded.

going back to my original point tho, and as ridiculous as this may sound, part of iphone,s "faults" are also it's strengths. that tight control and that "walled garden" lends to its ease of use and compatibility. that "boring" iOS and the lack of innovation also supports tight integration with accessories and third party applications, such as the iDrive you are fond of.

some things just make more sense on the iphone. you can tap on your headphone control, wake the phone and voice dial without ever touching it. can't do that on the S3... they are different, and each have their own strenghts and shortcomings; niether is perfect.

still, there seems to be a lot of things you don't like or seems "broken" on your particular S3.

One thing that immediately comes to mind is the "not a single video" was ok. I spent the weekend camping out on the lake and took videos of the kids tubing (big, wide and flat tube designed to be pulled behind a boat), and was rather upset that a big crash was missed because while i thought it was being recorded, I apparently didn't see in the bright sunlight it actually wasn't! still, the ones I did get sounded pretty much the same as on my niece's 4S. no chipmunks on either of our phones... it's hard for me to fathom so many things broken on one particular phone. i'm sure you can understand that from my perspective.

incidently, she later dropped her iPhone in the fire lol. parts of the case had melted by the time it was finally saved, but the phone still works fine :)

As far as car integration, BMW and Samsung have partnered up, but the integration app won't be out until next summer. Maybe i'll use my phone as an iPod until then.

now that is something that sound like it may go a long way towards how much you like your S3, but that's a year away and certainly another Android device will have surpassed the S3 by then. Are you willing to compromise your likes/dislikes for that long?

Look.. there's nothing wrong with sticking with your iPhone, or waiting to see what iPhone 5 happens to offer.

If you keep the S3, and there are things you want to change, certainly ask in here as you'll get a large number of people more than willing to help.

If you go back to your iPhone, no one is going to lose any sleep over it.

These days, for better or worse, phones play a huge part in our daily lives. Just go for the one that makes your life easier.
 
This, or if you want a free one, GSAM Battery is similar I think (I'm too cheap to buy BBS so it might be superior but I can't say)

Yes, you're absolutely right :)

I downloaded GSam and the free version would seem a great help when looking for battery drain. Here's what it tells me about my system:

Screenshot_2012-08-20-16-48-32.png



Screenshot_2012-08-20-15-32-23.png


OP try this to see if it might aid in tracking what's eating up your battery. Also, everyone should keep in mind the % reported as "radio" is incorrect (the value assigned in the firmware is wrong and needs to be fixed by Samsung - see SURoot's stickied petition thread).
 
Yes, you're absolutely right :)

I downloaded GSam and the free version would seem a great help when looking for battery drain. Here's what it tells me about my system:

Screenshot_2012-08-20-15-32-23.png


OP try this to see if it might aid in tracking what's eating up your battery.


Good Find! Looks simpler then Better Battery stats ...
 
I also go into the stock task killer very often and kill everything after I use my phone.

I was super OCD about clearing out the task manager, and eventually learned that it's MUCH more battery efficient to let the phone do it's thing. After adopting the "leave it alone" policy, my battery life is a thousand times better.

It makes sense... if i check facebook, instagram, mail, sms early and often, it doesn't make sense to clear out those apps manually when I'll probably open them up a short time later. It uses less battery to keep the app in the task manager than to kill it completely and have to full restore it everytime.

My AT&T S3 connects to known wifi networks very quickly, the only issue i was having was that on my home network it would stay connected, but stop working... turning the wifi sleep to NEVER fixed that problem.

i came from iphone 3, 4, and 4S and it's no comparison, IMO, there's little things here and there that are a little bothersome but the pro's far outweigh the cons for me in favor of the S3. I'm anxious to see the new iPhone (& jailbroken) when it comes out and how it compares to the S3.
 
I was having horrendous battery life too and I'm not sure which of these two resolved it or if the combination of both did but now my phone uses like 3-4% battery life an hour if I don't touch it at all. It used to chew through 10% per hour, and it would be down to 40% after like 3 hours of use. Anyways, what I did is I installed this app called CPU Spy, and I also turned the phone off and removed the battery, put the battery back in, restarted the phone. Ever since then I get great battery life.
 
Yes most issues can be overcome! But as for battery life, remember your comparing a phone with a 3.5 screen and not running on LTE against a phone that does run LTE and has a giant screen.

OK here's what I did...my first GS3 wasn't getting good battery life at all, just terrible!

So I got a new unit and started from scratch. That choice is up to you, otherwise you can do a hard reset and go from there.

First things 1st, you don't need juice defender, or anything like that. The Samsung task killer works just fine. As for wifi, go into the settings and change the settings to the following, where is says keep wifi on during sleep...set to only when plugged in! And where it says frequency band, set to 2.4! Those fixes should help alot.

As for the battery life, if you get a new one use it out of the box and run it down until it just completely dies. Meaning set it up, do your thing with your apps and ring tones and all that, and then run it down till it dies. Next plug it in and leave it alone, just let it charge all the way up to 100, when the light turns green, unplug it and shut it off and then plug it back in and allow it to charge for another 10 min or so. Some will say you don't need to do this with modern batteries, well I've done this about for about the first three charges with the new unit and I'm now getting roughly 17/18 hrs on a charge!

Also I only use GPS when I need it, same for blue tooth. Wifi is used whenever I'm home and stays on until I leave my house.

Hopefully it all works out for u!

This is exactly what I did several days after getting the S3 because I was getting terrible battery life. Now it's fantastic. Easily a third better than my DX.

It's not that the battery needs conditioning but rather the phone needs to be calibrated to the full range of the battery and you can't do this unless you discharge it fully. Fully discharging lithium ion batteries is not real good for the battery but doing it once in a while to keep the phone calibrated will return good battery life.
 
This seems a lost cause thread (as far as swaying opinion). The OP is clearly more happy with the iPhone, so a lot of wasted energy, IMO. Of course the iPhone will have better battery life, since less dynamic OS, lower clock, a lot smaller display and no 4G radio. Seems kind of obvious.

The other issue for the GS3 is it does suck battery VERY inefficiently in low signal areas- especially 3G. The amazing battery life in medium to good signal areas is offset by this and explains the "all over the place" user results.

The OP should move on and be happy with another iPhone. I have an iPad 3 and iPod 4, so appreciate the appeal for folks.

Added: As far as wifi, it seems fine to me compared to relative's iPhones and even better if you turn off the power saving mode with the phone code hack, posted a few times already.
 
This seems a lost cause thread (as far as swaying opinion). The OP is clearly more happy with the iPhone, so a lot of wasted energy, IMO. Of course the iPhone will have better battery life, since less dynamic OS, lower clock, a lot smaller display and no 4G radio. Seems kind of obvious.

The other issue for the GS3 is it does suck battery VERY inefficiently in low signal areas- especially 3G. The amazing battery life in medium to good signal areas is offset by this and explains the "all over the place" user results.

The OP should move on and be happy with another iPhone. I have an iPad 3 and iPod 4, so appreciate the appeal for folks.

Added: As far as wifi, it seems fine to me compared to relative's iPhones and even better if you turn off the power saving mode with the phone code hack, posted a few times already.

I believe the OP has already left the party.....a few others are still around finishing a bottle of wine and discussing some of the finer points of battery life, etc.......
 
How so?? I could probably live with the battery life, I'm just used to charging my iPhone every other day. The audio when taking videos seems widespread??

Do you really expect a non-protected microphone to work well in the wind and in a highly noisy environment? If so, how come all reporters use protection and what for?
 
Do you really expect a non-protected microphone to work well in the wind and in a highly noisy environment? If so, how come all reporters use protection and what for?


well in fairness there are phones that record better audio than others...

for instance...the Droid X had a BUNCH of different settings for taking video based on where the audio was coming from and what type of environment you were in...and some of the settings made DRASTiC differences...i remember taking a couple videos at a concert...on the default setting you got the normal nasty distorted crap...but in concert mode it actually sounded pretty damn good...the DX had some superb noise canceling microphones IMO...

i have not taken much video with the GS3...but not all phones are created equal...
 
You must hardly ever use the phone, my girlfriends iPhone 4 has to be charged daily. In fact the S3 gets better battery life than the iPhone 4/4s. Try installing Juice Defender from the Play Store.

Its true, between the hours of 9-6 M-F my phone sits in my car. I pretty much just listen to music on the commute, and then at gym when I get home. That and email/sms.....which is way better on my S3 than my iPhone IMO.

The guy at the store took one look at my videos and gave me a new device. The audio wasn't poor, it was scrambled and out of sync. I'm going to give the new one a go.

For some reason my apps didn't automatically re-download, but not a big deal. Thanks for all the information here.
 
Yes, you're absolutely right :)

I downloaded GSam and the free version would seem a great help when looking for battery drain. Here's what it tells me about my system:

Screenshot_2012-08-20-16-48-32.png



Screenshot_2012-08-20-15-32-23.png


OP try this to see if it might aid in tracking what's eating up your battery. Also, everyone should keep in mind the % reported as "radio" is incorrect (the value assigned in the firmware is wrong and needs to be fixed by Samsung - see SURoot's stickied petition thread).

Question is...how much battery does this app use?
 
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